The Tibetan word Bardo means literally "intermediate state" - also translated as "transitional state" or "in-between state" or "liminal state".
Surfing is a surface water sport in which a person (the surfer) rides a board (the surfboard) on the crest of a wave as it carries the surfer towards the shore.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Friday nite prognostications

The youth culture was born in this country in the 60's, when a large segment of teenagers and twenty-somethings felt the deep need to differentiate themselves from what then became know as the mainstream. This it how and why the counter culture was born. One can only guess what the impact of the latest events in the world will have on the youth culture. I would hypothesize that they will up the ante in unheard and not seen before ways to distinguish themselves from the lot of us who will of course seem complicit in the apparently unjust world. The tools for their personal transformation must be technologically based. This is the new frontier in fashion. Be on the look out for the cutting edge corporations who will and have exploited the counter cultures insatiable need to appear separate. Apple provides an excellent example of reinventing the Walkman thru their Ipod. They upped the pricetag in conjunction with the memory capacity and then shrunk it down. Ingenius.

The Ipod example merely exemplifies an outstanding advertising campaign. What I am forecasting is a wave of technological fashion that has not been seen anywhere except Burning Man - at least that little old sheltered me has seen. The new tech fashions will involve mini lights in all different colors. The emphasis will initially be place on home made items. The technology is there and what is needed is something like the lego mentality where the various gadgets can be bought and fit together at the whim of the consumer.

Another area will be digital tattoos that will be animated. Have a nano chip embedded in your back with the program of a surfer on a big chunky wave getting barrelled. I am sure there will be many who will have x-rated tattoos on their body. At some point, some one will be arrested for indecencey and the case will reach the Supreme Court. What will Roberts do? What will happen when some one has a digital tattoo of an American flag burning on their back? I am sure there are many who would like to control these types of personal expression.

The world likes to draw lines and some of us like to cross them. Conflict draws human interest like moths to a flame. Laws are set up to feed the court system. The lines are drawn and they are arbitrary. Every culture does this, from prehistoric to posthistoric.

The internet is beginning to demonstrate that information is not going to be disemminated the same old way. It is the diving line between the new relatively powerless generation and the old boy network TV and newspaper show. The framework of information control has been exposed for all to see - or at least those who want to.

Blogging is an indicator for what is to come. Many people want to express themselves, share information and gather information from sources that are not centralized. The centralized models were demonstrating their vulnerability towards corruption over 50 years ago. Everyone remembers the show: "Dragnet". The internet is a classic form of anarchy. Not the slandered form of anarchy that the media began misrepresenting in the early 1900's. I am talking about Emma Goldsmith - one of the founders the whole concept of women's rights. I am talking about the anarchy that describes the earth - a 3.5 billion year example of negentropy.

The internet's paradigm has already infected our culture and everything will either allign with it or disappear.